Most Repeated Read Aloud Instruction:
Look at the text below. In 40 seconds, you must read this text aloud as naturally and clearly as possible. You have 40 seconds to read aloud.
Semiconductor
The semiconductor industry has been able to improve the performance of electric systems for more than four decades by making ever-smaller devices. However, this approach will soon encounter both scientific and technical limits, which is why the industry is exploring a number of alternative device technologies.
Legal Writing
Legal writing is usually less discursive than writing in other humanities subjects, and precision is more important than variety. Sentence structure should not be too complex; it is usually unnecessary to make extensive use of adjectives or adverbs, and consistency of terms is often required.
Electric Car
First-year university students have designed and built a groundbreaking electric car that recharges itself. Fifty students from the University of Sydney‘s Faculty of Engineering spent five months working together bits of plywood, foam and fiberglass to build the ManGo concept car. They developed the specifications and hand built the car. It’s a pretty radical design: a four-wheel drive with a motor in each wheel.
Population Growth
How quickly is the world’s population growing? In the United States and other developed countries, the current growth rate is very low. In most developing countries, the human population is growing at a rate of 3 people per second. Because of this bustling growth rate, the human population is well on its way to reaching 9 billion within lifetime.
Major Breeding Areas
Major breeding areas, and breeding islands, are shown as dark green areas or darts. Open darts shown no-breeding records on islands, and are also used for offshore sightings, that is from ships or boats. Other areas where species is not meant to be seen are plain pale green, with pale green hatching where records are usually sparse.
Carbon Dioxide Emission
When countries assess their annual carbon dioxide emissions, they count up their cars and power stations, but bush fires are not included – presumably because they are deemed to be events beyond human control. In Australia, Victoria alone sees several hundred thousand hectares burn each year; in both 2004 and more recently, the figure has been over 1 million hectares.
Father
Ever since I remembered, father woke up at five thirty every morning, made us all breakfast and read newspaper. After that he would go to work. He worked as a writer. It was a long time before I realize he did this for a living.
Industrial Revolution
As to the Industrial Revolution, one cannot dispute today the fact that it has succeeded in inaugurating in a number of countries a level of mass prosperity which was undreamt of in the days preceding the Industrial Revolution. But, on the immediate impact of Industrial Revolution, there were substantial divergences among writers.
Pluto
Pluto lost its official status as a planet yesterday, when the International Astronomical Union downsized the solar system from nine to eight planets. Although there had been passionate debate at the General Assembly Meeting in Prague about the definition of a planet – and whether Pluto met the specifications – the audience greeted the decision to exclude it with applause.
Lincoln
Lincoln’s apparently radical change of mind about his war powers to emancipate slaves was caused by the escalating scope of the war, which convinced him that any measure to weaken the Confederacy and strengthen the Union war effort was justifiable as a military necessity.
Blue
While blue is one of the most popular colors, it is one of the least appetizing. Blue food is rare in nature. Food researchers say that when humans searched for food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue, black or purple. When food dyed blue is served to study subjects, they lose appetite.
Statistical Information
The provision of accurate and authoritative statistical information strengthens modern societies. It provides a basis for decisions to be made on such things as where to open schools and hospitals, how much money to spend on welfare payments and even which football players to replace at half-time.
Marketing Management
For any marketing course that requires the development of a marketing plan, such as Marketing Management, Marketing Strategy and Principles of Marketing. This is the only planning handbook that guides students through step by step creation of a customized marketing plan while offering commercial software to aid in the process.
Fast Food
Hundreds of millions of people buy fast food every day without giving it much thought, unaware of the subtle and not so subtle ramifications of their purchases. They rarely consider where this food came from, how it was made, what it is doing to the community around them. They just grab their tray off the counter, find a table, take a seat, unwrap the paper, and dig in. The whole experience is transitory and soon forgotten.
Yellow
Yellow is the most optimistic color, yet surprisingly, people lose their tempers most often in yellow rooms and babies will cry more. The reason may be that yellow is the hardest color for eyes to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused.
Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and attains a depth of over a mile. While the specific geologic processes and timing that formed the Grand Canyon are the subject of debate by geologists, recent evidence suggests the Colorado River established its course through the canyon at least 17 million years ago.
MBA
Exhilarating, exhausting and intense. There are just some of the words used to describe doing an MBA. Everyone’s experience of doing MBA is, of course, different through denying that it’s hard and a demanding work whichever course you do. MBA is one of the fastest growing areas of studying in the UK so that must be a sustainable benefit against form in one pain.
Vanilla
The uniquely scented flavor of vanilla is second only to chocolate in popularity on the world’s palate. It’s also the second most expensive spice after saffron. But highly labor intensive cultivation methods and the plant’s temperamental life cycle and propagation mean production on a global scale is struggling to keep up with the increasing demand for the product.
Two Sisters
Two sisters were at a dinner party when the conversation turned to upbringing. The elder sister started to say that her parents had been very strict and that she had been rather frightened of them. Her sister, younger by two years, interrupted in amazement. “What are you talking about?” she said, “Our parents were very lenient”.
Weakness
Weakness in electronics, auto and gas station sales dragged down overall retail sales last month, but excluding those three categories, retailers enjoyed healthy increases across the board, according to government figures released Wednesday. Moreover, December sales numbers were also advised higher.
Japanese tea ceremony
The Japanese tea ceremony is a ritual tour influenced by Buddhism in which green tea is prepared and served to a small group of guests in a peaceful setting. The ceremony can take as long as four hours and there are many traditional gestures that both the server and the guest must perform.
Russia
Long isolated from Western Europe, Russia grew up without participating in the development like the Reformation that many Europeans taking pride in their unique culture, find dubious value. Russia is, as a result, the most unusual member of European family, if indeed it is European at all. The question is still open to debate, particularly among Russians themselves.
21st Century
The beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered, not for military conflicts or political events, but for a whole new age of globalization – a ‘flattening’ of the world. The explosion of advanced technologies now means that suddenly knowledge pools and resources have connected all over the planet, leveling the playing field as never before.
Australian English
Australians do speak English. However, for some tourists and travelers, it can be difficult to understand the slang. Also, the links between Australian and American English were seen to be very tenuous. At least some colloquialisms in Australian English does not exist in other types of English.
Incentive Pay Schemes
If bonus or incentive pay schemes work so well for chief executive and bankers, why does everyone not get them? After all, many jobs involve making important decisions or taking risks. Is there anything about corporate decision and financial risks that makes these categories of work special in terms of how they need to be incentivized and rewarded?
Productive Capacity
The core of the problem was the immense disparity between the country‘s productive capacity and the ability of people to consume. Great innovations in productive techniques during and after the war raised the output of industry beyond the purchasing capacity of U.S. farmers and wage earners.
Himalayas
Although it hails from a remote region of the western Himalayas. This plant now looks entirely at home on the banks of English rives. Brought to the UK in 1839. It quickly escaped from Victorian gardens and colonized river banks and damp woodlands. In the Himalayas the plant is held in check by various pests, but take these away and it grows and reproduces unhindered. Now it is spreading across Europe, New Zealand, Canada and the US.
Fiscal Year
At the beginning of each fiscal year funds are allocated to each State account in accordance with the University’s financial plan. Funds are allocated to each account by object of expenditure. Account managers are responsible for ensuring that adequate funds are available in the appropriate object before initiating transactions to use the funds.
Diversity of Language
The diversity of human language may be compared to the diversity of the natural world. Just as the demise of plant species reduces genetic diversity, and deprives humanity or potential medical and biological resources. So extinction of language takes with it a wealth of culture, art and knowledge.
Orientalists
Orientalists, like many other nineteenth-century thinkers, conceive of humanity either in large collectives or in abstract generalities. Orientalists are neither interested in nor capable of discussing individuals; instead, artificial entities predominate. …very wide labels every possible variety of human plurality, reducing it in the process to one or two terminal collective realities.
Shakespeare
A young man from a small provincial town — a man without independent wealth, without powerful family connections and without a university education – moves to London in the late 1580‘s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright of all time. How was this achievement of magnitude made? How does Shakespeare become Shakespeare?
Yellow Tulip
How do we imagine the unimaginable? If we’re asked to think of an object – say, a yellow tulip – a picture immediately forms in our mind’s eye. But what if we try to imagine a concept such as the square root of negative number?
Akimbo
Akimbo, this must be one of the odder-looking words in the language and puzzles us in part because it doesn’t seem to have any relatives, What’s more, it is now virtually a fossil word, until recently almost invariably found in arms akimbo, a posture in which a person stands with hands on hips and elbows sharply bent outward, one signaling impatience and hostility. (学生反映,考场真题没有最后的contempt)
Introvert and Extrovert
Introvert tends to recharge by spending time alone. They lose energy from being around people for long periods of time, particularly large crowds. Extroverts, on the other hand, gain energy from other people. Extroverts actually find their energy is sapped when they spend too much time alone. They recharge by being social.
No ordinary book
This book is no ordinary book, and should not be read through from beginning to end. It contains many different adventures, and the path you take will depend on the choices you make along the way. The success or failure of your mission will hinge on the decisions you make, so think carefully before choosing.
Augustus
Augustus was given the powers of an absolute monarch, but he presented himself as the preserver of republican traditions. He treated the Senate, or state council, with great respect, and was made Consul year after year. He successfully reduced the political power of the army by retiring many soldiers, but giving them land or money to keep their loyalty.
Teacher’s Instruction
In classes, your teachers will talk about topics that you are studying. The information that they provide will be important to know when you take tests. You must be able to take good written notes from what your teacher say.
The Preparation of Abstract
The preparation of abstracts is an intellectual effort, requiring general familiarity with the subject. To bring out the salient points of an author’s argument calls for skill and experience. Consequently a considerable amount of qualified manpower that could be used to advantage in other ways must be diverted to the task of facilitating access to information.
Botswana
Although Botswana’s economic outlook remains strong, the devastation that AIDS has caused threatens to destroy the country’s future. In 2001, Botswana has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world. With the help of international donors it launched an ambitious national campaign that provided free antiviral drugs to anyone who needed them, and by March 2004, Botswana’s infection rate has dropped significantly.
Shrimp
Shrimp farmers used to hold animals in nursery ponds for 30 to 60 days; now they try to move them into grow-out ponds in less than 30 days. This reduces stress on the animals and dramatically increases survivals in the grow-out ponds. Many farms that abandoned nursery ponds have gone back to them, and the results have been surprisingly positive. They’re using the old, uncovered, earthen, nursery ponds.
Environmental Policy Course
Along with customary classes on subjects such as finance, accounting, and marketing, today’s MBA students are enrolling on courses for environmental policy and stewardship. Indeed, more than half of business schools require a course in environmental sustainability or corporate social responsibility, according to a survey of 91 US business schools, published in October 2005.
Public Demand for Education
Public demand for education has remained strong, reflecting the importance of education as a means of social progress. Aware of the added value of education to the world of work, the government continues to innovate and update the education system in order to produce a qualified and competent workforce.
